School District Rethinks Its Mission On Integration

Teacher Hiring, Magnet Programs Face Overhaul

Starting today, your race no longer can stop you from teaching at the public school of your choice.

Two weeks from now, your children's skin color won't prevent them from attending Broward County's top education programs. Only their performance will do the talking.

Less than a week after a federal judge struck down a desegregation decree, race-based hiring, student assignment and magnet school admission policies that were in place for years are being dismantled and discarded.

In coming months, the district will examine - and could dramatically change - other programs designed to improve minority hiring on all levels and steer contracts to minority firms.

The nation's sixth largest school district, nudged by the courts and pushed by black activists, is completely rethinking its mission when it comes to race.

School district officials, embracing the idea of "diversity," still would like to find ways to racially balance schools voluntarily.

Among those options might be the continued conversion of predominantly black schools into magnet programs to draw white students - as long as those programs don't include racial quotas. Another option: placing clusters of mostly white gifted students in inner-city schools. Yet another choice would be to randomly assign students among several schools.

Eventually, voluntary integration might take on a much broader meaning so that it affects more than races. Students with disabilities or those with limited English-speaking skills could also be part of the new mix.

Schools Superintendent Frank Petruzielo said developing those ideas will take time. He's more interested in eliminating existing quotas now that the judge's ruling has come down.

U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth L. Ryskamp threw out the decree on Thursday, saying his decision last year to end court-supervised desegregation rendered the order toothless.

Petruzielo's first step is the elimination of a policy requiring that schools racially mix their faculties.

Until today, a school whose faculty was more than 40 percent minority had to fill its next open slot with a white teacher; a school whose staff was less than 17 percent black had to place a black teacher in its next vacancy. That meant black teachers and white teachers - no matter how qualified - were often rejected from schools whose faculties the district viewed as racially imbalanced.

The next step, likely to be taken by the School Board at its next meeting, will be to revamp policies that prevent students in predominantly black and white schools from transferring to another school.

Board members also will be asked to stamp out a policy mandating that the percentage of black students in each of the four Nova schools match their districtwide ratio. This year, blacks comprised 34.8 percent of the district enrollment and, therefore, each of the Nova schools.

The board is expected to approve those changes at its June 18 meeting.

Board members already began moving to a voluntary integration system last year when they started phasing out forced busing. Beginning this fall, no student will be forced to attend a school outside their community.

While supporting the idea of diversity, School Board member Abe Fischler said he's glad the district can get on with the business of educating children rather than counting faces.

"I don't have to worry about the color of a student's skin or the makeup of a school. As far as I'm concerned, desegregation doesn't exist as a major system priority," he said during an informal session Tuesday to discuss last week's federal ruling.

Black activists were not beaming about the coming changes that Petruzielo has proposed. After all, they've spent years battling for the right to send their kids to neighborhood schools and the opportunity to enroll them in classes where black teachers could serve as their role models.

But emotionally battered and a little bitter from the long war, black parents have a different attitude.

They've seen their neighborhoods ripped apart by forced busing and they've watched their friends, black teachers, denied jobs at local schools because they better served district quotas in a western school.

"Why'd it take so long?" James Sparks said after the board's informal meeting Tuesday.

Sparks is a member of Citizens Concerned for our Children, a group of black activists that forced the issue last year when the group sued the school district to vacate the desegregation order that was thrown out last week.

Few issues are as important to Ernestine Price as letting more black teachers into the classrooms of predominantly black schools.

Price, a member of Citizens Concerned for our Children and the grandmother of a dozen public school children in Broward, thinks black children would perform better if there were more black teachers serving as role models - especially if the black educators replaced white teachers who aren't as excited about being there.

"I'm not looking at numbers. I'm looking at competent, motivated, qualified teachers who want to help our children," she said. "This is something we've been asking for a long time."